Some More News - Some More News: RIP Mitch McConnell

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Hi. On today's episode, we look at the life and legacy of Mitch McConnell, who may have passed away or is still technically alive. We didn't check.Hosted by Cody JohnstonExecutive Producer - Katy StollDirected by Will GordhWritten by Marco Siler-GonzalesEdited by John ConwayProduced by Jonathan HarrisPost-Production Supervisor - John ConwayResearcher - Marco Siler-GonzalesGraphics by Clint DeNiscoHead Writer - David Christopher BellPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#mitchmcconnell #RipMitchMcconnell #republicans For a limited time get 40% off your first box PLUS get a free item in every box for life. Go to https://hungryroot.com/smn and use code: SMNIf you’re 21 or older, go to https://indacloud.co and use code SMN for 30% off the entire month.Mondays don’t move for anyone. Pre-Alcohol works overnight so you can have a real weekend and still show up sharp. https://ZBiotics.com/MORENEWS, code MORENEWS for 15% off.Pluto TV. Stream Now. Pay Never.Chapters:0:00 - Introduction1:44 - RIP Mitch6:49 - Mitch’s Origin18:15 - Mitch Vs. Obama’s HOPE28:21 - Mitch’s Supreme Court Takeover42:19 - Go F*ck Yourself, MitchSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is he dead yet? It's legal to ask that. I'm not even specifying who. Could be talking about Lindsey Graham, who is dead? Remember that? Remember how Lindsey Graham is dead? A lot of dead people lately. Good dead people and bad dead people.

Probably some neutrals in there too. Also, hey, hi, hi, welcome, like and subscribe and hello. Remember dead Lindsey Graham? What a legacy? He had? Can you remember like one thing that Lindsay Graham believed in or accomplished? I mean, obviously bombing Iran, but other stuff.

It's not a trick question. He was in the Senate for over 20 years. Must be weird to exist as an NPC for the most corrupt and overly sinister version of the Republican Party for your entire job to be the opposite of a hero's journey. Like if Odysseus just kept doing the Trojan horse trick over and over while watching the world around him, get worse and knowing Lindsey Graham knew what a sad life he should have been one of the

Tim Curry's you know remember how sad we were when Tim Curry died because a whole lot of people are dying lately except for the one we really assumed would die no not that one the other one this one RIP Mitch McConnell America's Bucksum sweetheart sorry we were going to I'd do a whole episode on Dolly, but I had to swap it at the last minute. So here's some news. Is Mitch McConnell dead when you watch this?

It's a fair question. Rumors started to swirl about Mitch's well-being back in mid-June after his neighbors shot video of someone getting wheeled out on a stretcher. Various media outlets then released this recording of an EMS dispatch responding to a cardiac arrest with CPR at McConnell's home. For weeks, the only proof that Mitch was still alive

was a statement from his cheque from his chief of staff and this life-affirming tweet by notorious truth-sayer Scott Jennings, claiming that they talk just shy of 20 minutes. It got to the point that even members of his own party were openly questioning if he was alive or not. Do you know that he's alive? I don't.

Just the things that I've heard and seen from some friends is that he's obviously not doing well, but don't know if he's alive where he's passed away. Bad look. Then on July 12th, McConnell's team released this photo showing a jolly McConnell clutching the day's newspaper. Again, bad look. Bad look if a politician has to post a hostage-style proof-of-life picture

simply because he's so old that nobody knows if he's alive. That means the kidnapper in this case is the concept of death. According to a released statement, he had taken a nasty fall at his home, went briefly unconscious, and caught a case of pneumonia in the process. I guess he fell into a puddle of pneumonia. Typical old guy stuff. He should probably retire.

And that statement hasn't quelled the growing suspicion that McConnell is probably dealing with something a bit more severe than mild pneumonia. I mean, I still think he might be dead. He has since been discharged from the hospital to a rehab center and is now recovering at home. But he hasn't made a public appearance in 87 days as of this episode's recording and counting.

Not to mention, this prolonged absence follows a long string of health worries. Remember, three years ago when he just, This week, it's been good by partisan cooperation and a string of... Amazing zoom from the camera person there. What an incredible moment to capture perfectly. And then, just a month later, McConnell,

He... What are my thoughts about what? Running for re-election in 2026. That's it. Did you hear the question, Senator? Running for re-election in 2026? Yes. Art.

That's art. He's being asked if he'll run again, and then his brain just leaves. Like a toddler hypnotized by Miss Rachel, Mitch just locks into the great beyond. So, yeah, RIP. Whether or not he's dead when this video is published,

he's long dead. We can bury him, which is troubling since he's been serving as an elected official making decisions on federal policy. It certainly ties into why his team has been so coy about releasing information on the senator. Perhaps it might have to do with the fact that if McConnell was deemed unfit or a dead, then Kentucky's governor could have run a special election

to take McConnell's place. Not that it would matter much, Republicans still have a majority in the Senate without McConnell, and he plans on retiring at the end of this year anyway. But it's a classic McConnell move, a fitting end to his career, bending rules and exploiting loopholes

in order to give his party just a little bit more power. That's our Mitch, RIP, unless he's alive, in which case, RIP. It's hard to believe just how power powerful Mitch McConnell was in his prime. It's like watching 38-year-old Shaquille play on blown-out knees for the Celtics, while remembering what an absolute juggernaut he was

when he won three finals MVPs in a row for the LA Lakers. That's right, I'm equating Shaq on the Lakers to Mitch McConnell in the Senate. That's how dominant of force he was and how much I'm familiar with... Basketball. They also had the same vertical, incidentally. And it's worth a moment to look back at how Mitch clawed his way through the ranks of America's political class

whilst battling a debilitating lack of personality. After all, he's not a Reagan-like celebrity or an ex-football player or former military man or a rich oil baron. He's just... Mitch. That's our Mitch! By all accounts, McConnell was obsessed with the power of politics from a young age. As a quiet, introverted kid, McConnell was infatuated with the student council president, who, to quote his memoir, had the envy of everyone.

Yeah, Mitch. You know how everyone loves the class president? Yeah, Mitch. From that point on, McConnell was driven by winning over anything else. His ideology bent with the political wins of the times, as long as they led him into a favorable position. For example, after the Nixon Watergate scandal, McConnell wrote an op-ed in the Louisville Courier Journal, criticizing the growing influence of money in public office, as if that's something he's historically cared about.

Because, of course, he loves money in politics. We know this, and he knows this. Mitch later told a reporter that the op-ed was simply playing for headlines. In other words, McConnell planned on running for public office as a report. and he wanted to clean himself of that salty Nixon stench before doing so. That opportunity came in 1977 when McConnell ran for Jefferson County judge in Kentucky. Despite wielding the charisma of a hospital bed, McConnell made his pitch to voters as a genuine, down-the-middle kind of guy. If you think we're stuck with politics as usual in Jefferson County, don't tell that to Mitch

McConnell. I'm from the South End. We came up to hardwetting. the right way, like a lot of you. We really try to do what's right. Determining what's right and what's less right or what's wrong is not easy, but the motivation, the intention, to try to do what's best for the community is what really guides our decision making.

Look at him! Young Mitch! Sitting in a wicker chair like some kind of beatnik. Wearing sneakers and loose pants? What a rebel! He might have even chewed a gum or two. McConnell's victory was a major upsets. was a major upset considering he ran as a Republican in what at the time was a relatively democratic area. Of course, he made lots of promises to people that he never intended to keep, like pledging to uphold collective bargaining rights for public employees or feigning to be pro-choice.

From that point, McConnell followed in the footsteps of other family values conservative giants by divorcing his wife and partnering with Roger Ailes, who at the time was a former Nixon advisor. You know, that guy Mitch was so concerned about before? Ailes, who of course went on to run Fox News, gave McConnell the ammunition he needed to move up in the political ranks, namely by smearing his political opponents as lazy freeloaders and drug addicts. Ever since this race began, Dee Huddleston has been running away from his record, but now Kentucky is closing in. Hold it against school prayer? Give away our Panama Canal. Get him. He runs and he hides.

But we're going to catch him. It's time you face your record. Mr. Green tomorrow, no wonder he's running from his record. But he can't run forever. Get him, boys, come on. We got you now, Dee Huddleston. Switch to Mitch McConnell for U.S. Senate. Political ads used to be so much better.

What happened? We used to be a proper country. McConnell unseated the incumbent Democratic senator in 1984, becoming the first Republican to win a statewide race in Kentucky since 1968. By this point, he'd already proven himself as a shrewd politician, but McConnell's career didn't really launch into orbit until he passed that classic political right of passage,

shacking up with the heiress of a maritime shipping company. By marrying Elaine Chow, McConnell suddenly had access to a vast network of billionaire industry magnates, not to mention a personal fortune of inherited wealth through Chow's family. Chow had political ambitions herself, securing a position as the Secretary of Labor under George Wario Bush's first administration. With his wife in the White House and himself a rising star in the Republican Party, it didn't take long for McConnell to start running interference for his big donor buddies, who, dare I say, were less than reputable.

It started with a coal slurry spill. October 11th of 2000, 307 million gallons of arsenic sludge and heavy metals was dumped for. into our water supply. It came through here and entered the river right here. Ooh, arsenic sludge, great screamo band. Add some Mitch in there and you get the classic film, arsenic and old face. Anyway, the 2000 Massey Energy coal slurry spill

is considered one of the largest industrial spills in US history. People in Martin County today still don't trust the drinking water. The immediate aftermath of the spill happened to coincide with the incoming Bush administration. And so, Elaine Chow was put in charge of overseeing the ongoing investigation into the spill. Chow proceeded to fill her office with former McConnell staffers before pulling the plug on the investigation into Massey Energy, settling for a light fine of $5,600.

For doing Captain Planet crimes. During his tenure as Senate fundraiser, McConnell pulled nearly $600,000 in contributions from the coal industry at least. large. As the coal investigation was still pending, Massey Energy wrote a check to the National Republican Senatorial Committee for 100,000 big ones. A real sludge fund. Money wins elections, of course, and Mitch likes winning elections. The Massey Energy coal spill was a giant blustering red flag regarding Mitch McConnell's priorities as an elected official. A company dumped more toxic sludge than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in his home state, and Mitch basically shrugged his shoulders so long as his check cleared. It also showed that if you were a big corporation looking to maximize

profits at the expense of regular people, then Mitch was your guy. And boy, this really sets the stage for his modern career, right? Using wealth and access to gain office by trashing the opponent and then immediately selling out your own citizens for corporate money. It's wild. Because you look at these old bastards and you just assume they must have believed in something at some point. Surely they didn't become a politician to be corrupt and lust only for power. But that's our Mitch, our wacky Mitch, RIP maybe.

What a piece of shit he is. and was and always will be. And yes, this is only the beginning. Because after the break, Mitch meets Obama. Barack Hussein Obama. Quite an odd couple. Should be fun and filled with adventure. Getting back into the swing of things with the new school year is always tough.

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I bought a freaking submarine for this after all! Welcome back, you lovely little nymph. It's Cody. I'm Cody. You're you, and we, me and you, were just discussing the evolution of Mitch McConnell from an ambitious and plucky political asshole to a no-holds-barred, well-seasoned asshole in the U.S. Senate. At this point, Mitch had the political cachet and the literal cash to become a domineering force in American politics. But there was something missing.

As we've already mentioned, Mitch was born with a debilitating lack of Riz. I believe the medical term is chryzemia or breadface, as the media calls it. He's a fart. An odorless human fart. It looks painful whenever he smiles. He has the voice of a spreadsheet. If he was a character in cars, he'd be the DMV. He's a boring guy, is my point.

And don't take it from me. I'm just repeating what McConnell's own friends and colleagues say about him. One former Republican senator told the New York Times that Mitch isn't a party guy. He's just there. He's just a fact of. life. Imagine a Republican senator calling you boring. Mitch, he's just there. A fact of life for now. Allegedly, we're not sure. RIP probably. But lucky for this medium glass of room temperature water, Mitch didn't need any of that personality. In fact, his lack of personality made him the perfect

heel for a certain president who had an abundance of personality. Barrio, Mr. Tansuit himself, Captain Drone, Mitch turned out to be the perfect stick in the mud to Obama's administration. The Republican Party leader of the U.S. Senate says his priority over the next two years is to block the Democrats at every turn, and in turn block the president from re-election in 2012. The only way to do all of those things is to put someone in the White House who won't veto any of these things. McConnell says his party will repeatedly vote against Mr. Obama's initiatives. On health care, that means we can and should propose and vote on straight repeal repeatedly.

Let's put the face off between Obama and McConnell in perspective here. Obama came into the White House with sweeping public support in the wake of a financial crisis that the public largely placed at the feet of his predecessor. In other words, the American public was unhappy with what the GOP had previously done and now expected Obama to clean up the mess. It was that whole hope thing that had our parents in a chokehold. McConnell, then the Senate minority leader, knew that if he could obstruct any and all aspects of Obama's agenda, then the American public would quickly lose confidence in the Democrats.

In 2010, McConnell summed up his ambition as the Republican Senate leader as, quote, the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president. Inspiring stuff. It really can't be stressed enough what the dynamic here was. Obama was campaigning on reaffirming Americans' faith in the system to get us out of a funk left by the Republicans and push us towards progress and the future and all that crap.

And Mitch bravely took up the mission of stopping that progress and squashing any hope that things could, get better so that Americans could maintain a level of bitterness and distrust that would put his party back in power. That is what he was doing. He took the position against hope. And while he didn't make Obama a one-term president, spoiler, sorry, his plan worked, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. At the time, the best way for Mitch to implement this strategy was through an arcane and little-used procedural tool in the U.S. Senate, otherwise known as the Philip Buster. Named for its inventor, Philip Buster, don't Google it, the filibuster became

Mitch McConnell's broadsword in the Senate. As the Senate minority leader, McConnell required everything from legislation, votes on the debt ceiling, to federal judge confirmations, to require a minimum of 60 votes for approval in the Senate, rather than a simple majority. Between In 2009 and 2010, the 111th Congress initiated 137 filibusters. In 2009 alone, there were double the number of filibusters as there were for the entire 50s and 60s. Over 400 bills, a lot of them with broad bipartisan support, passed in the House but never even got a vote or debate on the Senate floor.

That was the entire point. Under McConnell, the Senate became less of a legislative bill. body and more of a blunt obstructionist instrument. McConnell even filibustered his own bill after Senate Democrats called his bluff over granting President Obama more power over raising the debt ceiling. Yes, really.

Is there objection? Madam President, Reserving the right to object, matters of this controversy, what we're talking about here is a perpetual death ceiling grant in effect to the president. Matters of this level of controversy always require 60 votes, And so I would ask my friend the Majority Leader if he would modify his consent agreement to set the threshold for this vote at 60.

Madam President. Majority Leader. Reserving the right to object, but what we have here is a case of Republicans here in the Senate once again not taking guess for an answer. This morning a Republican leader asked consent to have a vote on this proposal. Just now I told everyone that we're willing to have that vote, upper down vote. But now the Republican leader objects his own idea. So I guess we have a filibuster of his own bill, so I object. Is there objection to the original request?

Yeah, I object. Objection is heard. Got whiplash. So for context there, McConnell was betting that the Democrats wouldn't make the political gamble of granting President Obama more authority over raising the debt ceiling, thus portraying them as an un-united mess. But they called his bluff. So McConnell had to filibuster himself to avoid giving Obama the reality stone over the debt ceiling.

It's really incredible to watch, because McConnell is very openly showing that he has absolutely no interest in actual policy or governing. It's not about what Obama believes in. Mitch's singular goal is to halt everything, all attempts by the government to do anything at all, digging it to the general populace just so he can stick it to Democrats, just to make them fail for partisan purposes. It's wild that was allowed to happen, and it shows exactly how little interest Mitch has in the needs of the American people,

or really anything besides what he perceives as winning. So, yeah, during this time, the Senate was at a virtual standstill on legislation. In 2013, public confidence in Congress was at 10%, A brand new low. Seeing as Democrats still had a majority in the Senate, McConnell wagered that voters would punish them for the gridlock that he caused. And sure enough, that paid off in the midterms. President Obama says the Republican sweeping election victory will not make him change his priorities or his staff. He told reporters that Tuesday's results, quote, means that this democracy is working.

The GOP will control the Senate and House for the first time in eight years. Oh boy. 2014 kicked off McConnell's run as Senate Majority Leader. For the first time in his career, McConnell essentially had full control of Congress, which wouldn't have been possible without his big donor buddies in the Coke Network who spent a combined $100 million on elections around the country. Obviously, McConnell didn't actually have any intention of legislating, even now that he had the power to do so.

Here's how McConnell laid out his plans as the majority leader at a Coke Network summit in 2014. Sorry in advance, we'll have to crank up this audio. On the job of the test for, we have made sure of all of the shows. And we're not going to be to take all these jobs for money. That's all we do in the summit is He was in the wrong way, one of the two-goers and they don't want to vote.

He was not the proper in a long time. He was not a tank of water. That was, of course, leaked audio, thanks to what I can only assume with some poor DNC. thanks to what I can only assume with some poor DNC aide who had to stick a recorder up his ass, and then put his ass really close to Mitch's face so we could hear the speech. I assume all the inaudible parts are Mitch mumbling.

Get that actual ass out of my awful face. What McConnell is essentially saying, though, is that under his leadership, Congress will act as a vessel explicitly for corporate interests. Minimum wage, environment, and healthcare, nonsense, hogwash even. Big money in politics might be the only thing McConnell actually cares about. It honestly might be the only thing for which he feels passion. Back in the 90s and early 2000s,

McConnell led an inter-party insurgency against John McCain and his efforts to pass campaign finance reform. Once McCain's bill passed in 2001, McConnell placed himself as lead plaintiff against the Federal Election Commission, claiming the bipartisan law violated the First Amendment, While he lost that case, McConnell renewed his push in 2010, acting as the main sponsor of the Citizens United lawsuit against the FEC. But the fact is, the court decision was actually fairly unremarkable. All it really said was that under the First Amendment, every corporation in America should be free to participate in the political process,

not just the ones at all newspapers and television stations. Really not all that remarkable, right? Completely unremarkable. Sure, Mitch, wait to bring that banality to evil. Thanks in part to McConnell, we now have billions of dollars in dark money spending in our federal elections. 75% of Americans say they've lost faith in government

due to unrestricted corporate spending in politics. And perhaps that's the cherry on top for Mitch, but mostly his victory in the Citizens United case proved that the most effective way to keep money flowing into Republican coffers and retain power was not through legislation or even deregulation. It wasn't a party that had to concern itself with what the American people actually want. Mitch knew the real lasting solution was through the courts. After all, executive orders and regulatory rules are fickle things. They can always get overturned by the next administration.

A Supreme Court with a conservative supermajority, on the other hand, ensures the conservative hegemony actually remains in perpetuity. And in 2016, McConnell was given the opportunity to stamp his legacy for good. We join you with this breaking news. Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court's most influential conservative has died. Scali, no! Poor guy, gone too soon. Without looking it up, I believe it was suicide by cops.

Or he crashed a jet ski or something. Point is, at the time of Scalia's death, the Supreme Court was left split down the middle with four conservative-leaning judges and four liberal-leaning ones. Obama still had a full year left in his second term to nominate a Supreme Court justice and effectively sway the Supreme Court over

to a narrow liberal majority. But of course, McConnell wasn't going to let that happen. But this is not about this particular judge. This is about who should make. make the appointment. We're in the process of picking a president and that new president ought to make this appointment, which will affect the Supreme Court maybe for the next quarter of a century. Gotta stress it. When he says they are in the process of picking a new president, they're a year away. One year. Again, it's wild. Any of this was allowed to happen. I don't know

who could have stopped it, but it just seems like a time cop or something needed to step in. But alas, McConnell made history by not even allowing a Supreme Court nominee to reach the Senate floor. Mind you, nominating a Supreme Court justice is perhaps one of the president's most consequential powers, and McConnell neutered it overnight. It was a particularly big win for the Goblin Man, not just because of the obvious, but also as a kind of revenge. You see, back in 1987, President Reagan, the actor, had just nominated the altering the ultra-conservative U.S. appellate court judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.

Bork's nomination process became so contentious that it spawned a new verb. To Bork. As in, the Democrats led a national campaign to Bork's nomination. In the end, Bork was borked 58 to 42 in the Senate with six Republicans crossing the aisle to reject the nomination. For McConnell, the borking of Bork was as traumatizing as walking in on your spouse, Borking a Muppet. You know which one. At that time, McConnell was powerless. He watched as the Democrat-controlled Senate overwhelmingly defeated Bork's nomination.

You happen to be the one who set the new Senate standard that will be applied in my judgment by a majority of the Senate prospectively. Unfortunately, it got set over your dead body, so to speak, politically. The Bork confirmation fight was so stunning and so bitter, but this was a moment when I think McConnell rightly said the rules have changed. I don't make the rules, but I can play by them and can master them. We're going to do it when we want to. And when we want to is going to be when the president, whoever he may be, sends up somebody

we don't like. Amazing how they're depicting it like Mitch watched his parents get gunned down in an alleyway or something. Poor, poor Mitch. And he held on to that spite for 30 goddamn years. No ideology there. He was just mad he didn't get his bork on. Which, by the way, wasn't this big unfair scandal at the time. Bork was considered and voted on by the Senate.

Unlike what Mitch allowed for Obama's last pick. Bork was just so unpopular and disliked that even Republicans had to vote against him. It's actually a great example of how our system should work. And that's what Mitch is so upset about. Not some injustice by the Democrats, but rather that he personally liked an unpopular Supreme Court pick in the 80s that didn't get selected. And then he made it everybody's problem. And so in 2016, McConnell made sure we weren't even allowed to evaluate the merits of Obama's nominee Merrick Garland in the

first place. He didn't even get a bork's chance. It really, really reminds me of a lot of what the GOP does, where they frame their overreactions as a retaliation, as if since, you know, the Democrats went after Trump for partisan reasons, like doing a coup and sexual assault and fraud, well then it's only fair they get to go after Fauci for wanting people to not die, and using the best information available at the time, right?

Mitch's pick didn't win, so he flipped the fucking bored and everyone just let him do it. Of course, Bork's revenge was probably just a perk because ultimately McConnell's decision to withhold the nomination of Merrick Garland boils down to power, retaining it for the GOP and withholding it from the Democrats. And withhold it he did. What happened here is, of course, directly related to the pickle we find ourselves in today. Before Trump, before MAGA, there was Mitch all that was and will ever be. He really, really borked us while simultaneously turning the Senate into an absolute disgrace. Not to get all sorken, but the Senate was at one time a legislative body that brought us the likes of the Civil Rights Act,

the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and oversaw Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. It was a place where ideas became laws. It provided an outcome for people. That was no longer true under McConnell. John Yarmouth, a Kentucky congressman who's known McConnell for over 50 years, told the New Yorker that McConnell never had any core principles. He just wants to be something. He doesn't want to do anything.

And how? Really can't stress enough. how much Mitch earned that whole grave digger of democracy title. If Trump indeed marks the implosion of America, then Mitch McConnell is the guy who lit that fuse. I mean, Reagan, sure, obviously, okay. 9-11 was there too. All right.

So this is like a Mount Rushmore of people and things destroying America, I guess. You got Mitch and Reagan and Bush. Trump, 9-11. Throw Mr. Beast up there. I'm sure he'll have a hand in it too. Also, that cashier that didn't say, you too when I told her to have a good day? We should probably go to an ad break,

and then after that we will ask ourselves what exactly happens when a Senate and Congress generally becomes a graveyard for ideas and policy. You probably know because you're smart and capable and will achieve anything if you put your mind to it and would tell me to also have a good day. You too, you'd say. Watch these ads.

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Oh, boy, do I? I'm going to say three totally randomly right now off the top of my head. I don't know. Let's see. Top Gun Maverick, Transformers, Rise of the Beasts, and Drongeons and Dragons, honor among thieves. That's right. Titles, Colons, and more titles over at Pluto TV, where all the movies are free. Now, that that's out of the way, let me tell you about one of my favorite comedies.

Parade of Fish starring Shark Wahlberg, Salman L. Jackson, James Sardine, Pike L. Douglas, Brill E. Williams, Anthony McRole, Angela Bassett, Lou Herring, No, Hake Lively, C.C.H. Flounder. Kurt Raseel, Drew Barry Kuda, Daryl Perjana, Mark Ruffalo, Sting Rames, Chris Spratt, Kevin Pollock, Felicity Pufferman, and, of course, Cod Odencirk, directed by Nicholas Ray. Anyway, we'll keep doing it this way for a while. Watch the stuff. Watch it! Watch it! Watch the stuff! Pluto TV's stream now. Pay never! Did you achieve your dreams? I didn't either.

Opposite. And speaking of the death of all hopes and dreams, we were just broaching the idea that, hypothetically, if Congress were to become a nihilistic torture chamber for any policies that look to improve people's lives, then American citizens might become very cynical about lawmakers and these institutions

and the government as a whole, which is right, what Mitch achieved under Obama. You might recognize this as exactly what the Joker's goal was for Gotham to bring out the despair and hate in people. Cool, what a cool thing for a politician to want. He should have at least worn the makeup.

Also, weirdly, he actually sounds more like Bain than the Joker. Like, oh, we're gonna be here. Philibuster, and so on. But yeah, by the end of Obama's second term, trust in government hit historic lows. While general markers of the economy, like unemployment and the stock market, had starkly improved, other things like income inequality

hit their highest point since the Gilded Age. 70% of Americans said that the government's policies following the Great Recession did little to nothing to help middle-class folks. So there we were, at our low, most nihilistic moment, and we could either pick ourselves back up, perhaps take a long look at what got us there. Or we could sell all our stuff and move to that commune run by the guy we met outside the mall who says he can heal us with crystal dust. Which did we pick?

In Hillary Clinton's America, the middle class gets crushed. Spending goes up. Taxes go up. Hundreds of thousands of jobs disappear. It's more of the same but worse. In Donald Trump's America, working families get tax relief. Millions of new jobs created. Wages go up. Small businesses thrive.

The American dream achievable. Shucks. And look, I'm not saying that Mitch McConnell alone brought us the rise of, you know, all this, but he was clearly a large cog in the Rube Goldberg machine designed to kick us in the taint. His time as majority leader was devoted to priming the American people to lose hope and accept another Republican in the White House. But little did he know which Republican that would be, because Mitch hates Trump. Just take a look at this clip from 10 years ago right after Trump clinched the Republican nomination. He's not going to be able to change

the Republican Party. I mean, we know what we believe in. We have some differences with him, but I think he would have to adapt to, you know, to where the sort of the right of center world is. and we do have some differences, but he brags about, you know, being transactional and being a dealmaker and all the rest. That's part of what makes things work in Congress. So I've given the alternative, I don't have any trouble at all supporting Donald Trump, and I hope everybody right of center does. Okay, you can't tell because he has the emotional range of a tree stump, but that's Mitch when he's upset. Boy, Mitch, you naive, sap you, sap from the tree stump you are. You're so young.

Just a lad. But, um, spoilers for Mitch. Trump did not assimilate into the Republican Party. He kind of did the opposite of that thing. He kind of made all of them bow down to him and kiss his disgusting feet. And if he isn't the downfall of America, he is certainly going to fundamentally change or perhaps destroy the Republican Party. Not to bring up the Nazis and fascists, which we never do on this.

show, but historians have compared McConnell's initial underestimation of Trump to 1930s Weimar Germany. Back then, Germany's fledgling conservative president, Paul von Hindenberg, installed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in an effort to galvanize their party's right flank and shut down the nation's rising left-wing movement. Hindenberg knew Hitler was a nut, but he was seeking his populism as a means to retain conservative power. What's the worst that could happen, right?

Right. It's not a one-to-one comparison, at least not until we name a doomed blimp after Mitch. But McConnell certainly thought at the time that Trump's far-right populism would be tempered with the old guard pragmatism of the conservative party. The thing is, the election of Trump wasn't just a rejection of Democrats, it was also a rejection of republicanism. Voters were rejecting Mitch McConnell's idea of the Republican Party. After all, they saw what he was doing during Obama's administration. We could see you, Mitch! And enough people, unfortunately, saw Trump as a way to stick a pipe bomb in the whole system, to shake things up and get stuff done.

They weren't voting in favor of procedural chess and electoral nihilism that McConnell championed over the years. Even in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell's popularity plunged in 2017, while Trump solidified his position as, well, the president, twice. If McConnell wanted to remain Senate leader and retain his seat, then he really had no choice but to bend the knee. That's, of course, what he did. They all did. He planted those sharp, brittle knobs on the hardwood.

Wow. Turns out that believing in nothing and just lusting after power is actually bad in the long run, huh, Mitch? You mummy, fuck. Are you dead yet? Or not, pick one, Mitch. Be dead or don't be? But of course, he wasn't sad about this.

McConnell ushered in three conservative Supreme Court judges during Trump's first term, including Amy Coney Barrett just weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Because once again, Mitch doesn't actually believe in anything. It gets to a point where you have to ask if Mitch McConnell has any line he won't cross in order to preserve power for his party.

Well, then, look no further than January 6th. My staff in the Capitol was putting furniture up against the doors. To prevent them from coming. To prevent the rioters from outside, from breaking the doors and getting at them. And what was it about to try to prevent the orderly transfer of government, which had never happened in our country? Your staff.

After the crisis was over, you went and spoke with them. It was a highly emotional situation. You remember? Oh, I remember it well. Do you remember what you told them? That, yeah, I remember what I told them. Oh, buddy, are you sad about the death of democracy? Have you tried fucking yourself?

Mitch, have you considered fucking yourself? Hey, hey, Mitch McConnell. So I've been drawing up a plan here on my paper. papers, and I figured out that if you're really concerned about what happened on January 6th, you should probably go fuck yourself, Mitch. Anyway, McConnell stated on the Senate floor that Trump was practically and morally responsible for provoking the rioters, but he still refused to vote to convict. This is a guy, by the way, who voted to convict President Clinton over obstruction of justice.

Because, of course he did. Following Trump's whole insurrection dealio, Elaine Chao resigned her post as Secretary of Transportation, citing concerns over Trump's behavior. In response, Trump launched racist attacks against Chow calling her Coco Chow and Mitch's China-loving wife. Mitch said nothing. Like a real Ted Cruz, he was. He was such a coward that Chow had to defend herself in the press, saying, when I was young, some people deliberately misspelled or mispronounced my name.

Asian Americans have worked hard to change that experience for the next generation. He doesn't seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans. That's pretty heartbreaking. I mean, here's a woman who is just grade school bullied by the most powerful political figure in the country, and her husband just refuses to defend her publicly because he doesn't want to make a fuss or rock the boat of the Republican Party. After all that, Mitch still endorsed Trump

when it was clear that he would clinch the Republican nomination in 2024. What a sad, pathetic man who, some say, should fuck himself. Mitch McConnell is 84 now. Or dead, didn't check. He was the longest running Senate party leader in history. And I guess we have to ask, what was it all for to support a guy who hates him and his wife in the pursuit of tax cuts for corporations? Filling the courts with conservatives and ending abortion rights? Empowering a demagogue to tear apart the institution that he was so proud of championing for so many years.

What do you say about a man who doesn't believe in anything? Everything McConnell has done in the Senate was in pursuit of winning. the next election and consolidating majority power. Everything was a means to that end. The only time we could find that McConnell bucked his party in pursuit of an ideal, at least before Trump, was his freshman year in the Senate in 1986. McConnell took to the Senate floor in opposition to President Reagan's veto of a sweeping sanctions package against apartheid South Africa. As president, as we all know, on June 12, 1986, the South of African government imposed sweeping state of emergency regulations which grant the military

and police broad powers to question and detain individuals. Since June 12, 1986, the government has acknowledged detaining close to 10,000 South Africans. Independent monitoring groups estimate more than 12,000 people have actually been detained. Last week, the Senate made the difficult decision to override the President's veto of the Anti-Apartite Act of 1986. None of us should feel this action resolve the issue or closed discussion of the problems South Africa confronts. By overriding the veto, we confirmed our responsibility and role in shaping our policy towards South Africa. This sense of the Senate resolution reaffirms our support for those who seek dialogue and peaceful ways to dismantle apartheid.

That's the first and only time that McConnell would express any semblance of a value as a U.S. politician. Polls show at the time that most Americans were pretty uninformed about the issue in general. That is to say that taking an anti-apartheid stance wasn't winning any votes or moving the needle for McConnell's next election. He made that vote because he presumably, hopefully, believed in its message. Anti-apartheid Mitch. Put that on his headstone. Not that apartheid. The other one. But that's it. That's the only evidence we found. that Mitch McConnell believes in something. From 1986,

which is all to say that maybe Mitch is still alive when this video comes out, or maybe he's dead, it actually doesn't matter. After all, he's been dead inside this whole time. Will he go to hell if there is such a place? Also doesn't matter, because he lived in hell. His entire legacy was to make the country a shared hell. More than ever before, we are living,

living Mitch's great plan for America, a country now run by corporations and the ultra-rich, where we now have a billion dollars of dark money pumped into the midterm elections this year. This is it, Mitch. This is what that looks like. The fruit of your labor is you staring off into the middle distance while describing how you had to barricade yourself from insurrectionists. His entire legacy is a footnote-sized cautionary tale, a fable, perhaps with a turtle in it, about the dangers of blindly lusting for power. And not even his power. He's not even Sheave Palpatine trying to rule the galaxy.

He was an aspiring toady or turtally, a bib fortuna, if you will. I don't know, maybe he enjoyed his personal life. He had kids. At least one of them certainly didn't like his politics. Maybe he owned a pinball machine. That'd be cool, you know? set up a little man cave for the weekends, and bringing it back to Lindsay Graham

and all these other old establishment Republicans, boy, it's really something to see their careers go out on this note. Because I'm sure that Graham told himself that, well, once they get past Trump, then surely it'll all go back to normal. The deal with the devil would be over, and the Republican Party, now more powerful, could certainly just repent.

for the MAGA era, himself included. But then he fucking died. That was it. No atonement. No book tour where he distances himself from Trump. He just died before Trump died with that stink forever unwashed. Same as Mitch. R.I.P.

Unless he isn't dead, don't care. This is our last episode solely devoted to this particular Mitch. We might do one about Mitch Pallaggy, I don't know. He played Walter Skinner in the X-Files. He was also the Shocker in the West Craven movie Shocker? Way better Mitch. Way better, Mitch. Oh my gosh.

That's over that guy. He's still young? Probably not. Remember the episode where he keeps seeing a succubus? Maybe that's what McConnell was seeing. Yeah. It doesn't matter, though, obviously, because the guy sucks. But let's say it's that.

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And we've got merch. Look at all that merch. Oh, my gosh. I want it. It's just a graphic on the screen. I can't grab it in real life. Darn it. Oh, well, um, the end, I guess. And I'm going to go back to this.

The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking. 48 hours before the trail goes cold. From A&E and Crime House, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series, The First 48. I'm Carter Roy. Every Thursday, I revisit a landmark, Homicide investigation in depth, with long-form storytelling built for your ears. Listen to and follow the first 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.